A
sharply divided Supreme Court struck down part of a law
crafted to help survivors of rape and domestic violence,
ruling 5-4 yesterday that Congress overstepped its power
when it gave women a right to sue their attackers.

The decision lifts a portion of the Violence Against
Women Act that was meant to guarantee that victims of sexual
assaults would not be dependent on the decisions of local
prosecutors and could themselves sue assailants in federal
court.

But of broader consequence, yesterday's ruling continues
the pattern of a five-justice majority limiting the power of
Congress and its ability to intervene in matters normally
addressed by states.

The case involved a Virginia Tech student who claimed she
was raped by two football players and who brought the first
lawsuit under the law. Joined by the Clinton administration,
her attorneys contended that Congress had the authority to
pass the act based on its constitutional power to regulate
interstate commerce--arguing in effect that women who feared
being attacked would be hindered from going out at night,
taking public transportation or engaging in other activity
that would help them find a job and contribute to the
economy. Since some of that activity occurs across state
lines, Congress believed it had the authority to deter
violence against women trying to travel or do business
around the country.

But in its decision, the court rebuffed that
argument.

"Every law enacted by Congress must be based on one or
more of its powers enumerated in the Constitution," Chief
Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote, emphasizing that
"gender-motivated crimes of violence are not, in any sense
of the phrase, economic activity." He was joined by Justices
Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and
Clarence Thomas.

That fivesome has consistently reined in federal power in
recent years, but yesterday's decision went further, marking
the first time since the New Deal era that the court
rejected extensive findings by Congress that an activity
substantially affects interstate commerce. Congress's power
under the commerce clause is important because it offers
lawmakers a way to address problems--racial discrimination,
most notably, in the 1960s--that federal lawmakers believe
states have failed to handle properly themselves.

Responding to the ruling, Martha F. Davis, who
represented former Virginia Tech student Christy Brzonkala,
said the act's civil remedy "gave women a way to take
matters in their own hands." Davis, of the NOW Legal Defense
and Education Fund, said she was most concerned by the
court's rejection of Congress's findings about the harmful
effects that rape and domestic violence have on employment
and other interstate commerce.

But Michael E. Rosman, of the Center for Individual
Rights, who represented the men Brzonkala accused of raping
her, countered that the framers of the Constitution "thought
that if Congress could regulate whatever it wanted
throughout the nation--and this law is just one small
example--it would be dangerous."

Congress adopted the 1994 law after determining in four
years of hearings that violent crimes against women were a
pervasive problem but that states were failing to treat
these offenses as seriously as other crimes. The law made
rape and domestic abuse a federal crime if the assailants
crossed state lines to attack their victims and provided
hundreds of millions of dollars for local governments to
enforce their own sexual assault laws.

A majority of the states had urged Congress to pass the
provision allowing victims to win money damages in civil
litigation and 36 states had entered yesterday's case on
Brzonkala's side.

But the court said that, in the end, "gender-motivated"
crimes are not the kind of economic activity covered by
Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. "If
Congress may regulate gender-motivated violence, it would be
able to regulate murder or any other type of violence,"
Rehnquist wrote, affirming the Richmond-based U.S. Court of
Appeals for the 4th Circuit and relying primarily on a 1995
decision that rejected Congress's attempt to ban guns near
local schools.

The federal government had argued that, in addition to
the commerce clause, the act's private remedy was a valid
exercise of Congress's power to enforce civil rights under
the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection
of the laws. Congress had found that discriminatory
stereotypes about rape victims made it difficult for local
jurisdictions to adequately investigate and prosecute
violence against women.

But the court said Congress's constitutional power in
this area covers only state actions, not individual
wrongdoing, so the Violence Against Women provision
improperly targets individuals who have committed crimes
motivated by gender bias.

Justice David H. Souter, joined by Justices John Paul
Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, penned a
vigorous dissent that addressed both the boundary between
federal and state power, as well as the gravity of crime
against women. They said the law should be upheld as a valid
exercise of Congress' power to deal with an activity that
has a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

Comparing the law to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Souter
wrote, "Gender-based violence in the 1990s was shown to
operate in a manner similar to racial discrimination in the
1960s in reducing the mobility of employees and their
production and consumption of goods shipped in interstate
commerce."

Speaking to the majority's larger effort to keep the
federal government out of the traditional business of the
states, Souter criticized the majority's retreat to
decades-old principles. "The federalism of some earlier time
is no more adequate to account for [today's economy]
than the theory of laissez-faire was able to govern the
national economy 70 years ago."

Brzonkala brought her lawsuit against Antonio J. Morrison
and James Crawford for the alleged 1994 dormitory attack,
after first filing a complaint against the men under
Virginia Polytechnic Institute's sexual assault policy. A
committee found Morrison guilty of sexual assault and
suspended him, but after subsequent hearings his offense was
reduced and his punishment was set aside. The Justice
Department joined the dispute, United States v. Morrison, on
Brzonkala's side.